Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Lessons learned about El Mirage

At the intersection of Mountain View and El Mirage rd.

At the North end of Mountain View rd, the BLM has a building or two to get your money

Look west from the extortion/BLM office building for this hill that is mostly West, the long way aross the lake bed... head directly to it, and don't drive through any cones. They are the markers for the high speed area, and you don't want to interfere with the area someone is approaching at over 200mph

When leaving, head directly for the right hand slope of the above hills. The lake is smooth except for the area about 1/4 mile around the edge, go slow, it's very rough, and if it looks dark, it's not smooth.

The Bureau of Land Management just started charging for access to the dry lakebed known as El Mirage.

70 plus years of hot rodders racing there, and I just happened to show up when they started charging admission.

$15 bucks. I recommend that if you leave early, like me just there a little while to spectate, try to sell your pass to someone else who is coming in... because they have a kid at the exit checking to see if you have a pass as you leave. It is proof that there is more than one way in.

You can't run the course more than once without a tow vehicle to pull or push you back to the starting area / pit stop. So if you wanted to just run, come back and wait your turn to run again... you can't. You have to pull or push your vehicle from the shut down end of the course to the start line area. Stupid in my opinion. Why can't you show up with a car, run it to see what it does, drive yourself to the sidelines and change gears, sparkplugs, carb, ignition system, or whatever! Then drive to the staging area and run again to see what improvement your new configuration made.Why not?

The access road is in bad condition, You leave hwy 395 onto Chamberlain or El Mirage rd, and it's easy to miss. Don't miss it. Bring a very detailed map of all the roads that intersect hwy 395... they aren't very easy to read, and it's a very backwoods area. You then leave El Mirage rd on Mountain View rd, and it's got speed bumps, tall ones. Don't try for more than 20 miles an hour over the damn things. Speed bumps on the road to a race venue, stupid.